Hawaiian Language Story: A Tipping Point and Happy Ending

  There appears to be a happy ending to my tale of woe about a national TV show that visited Hawaii and came out with a show dotted with mispronunciations of Hawaiian place-names. Fortunately, our PBS Hawaii 'ohana learned of the mangled words before the show was broadcast.

  The happy ending is all the sweeter because it was a member of the online community responding to this blog who became a key part of the solution. Hawaiian Studies Prof. Keola Donaghy from the University of Hawaii at Hilo wrote online, offering to help. So I called him. And he helped bigtime.

   It used to be, we Hawaii citizens just rolled our eyes when national media came over and didn't make even a minimal effort to learn Hawaiian phonetics. Not now. I sense a  tipping point has been reached. We're not amused or resigned anymore. We're ticked. We expect professionalism and respect for the culture. It's a mainstream sensibility. People of different ethnicities and origins spoke up for the host culture when they heard of this latest situation.

   I'm not mentioning the name of the show because the producers decided, after initial resistance, to put things right. And the award-winning program is otherwise well-done and interesting. It'll get a national airing next month, and PBS Hawaii will be proud to broadcast it.

   The pushback from the producers, with the tacit support of a presenting television station, was disheartening. At first they dismissed the errors as subtleties. Then they acknowledged mistakes and offered to let us correct them--but only in Hawaii, not the rest of the nation. They said they didn't have the time or money.

   I don't know for sure what changed their thinking. I have to believe there was no getting around a basic rule of journalism--get the names right! Even if the names sound random to you, with more syllables and more diacriticals than you're accustomed to hearing.

   After a volley of voice mails and emails, the producers said they'd re-do the narration if we could put them in touch right away with a Hawaiian-language expert. Keola Donaghy said he'd do what it took. Former PBS Hawaii Board Chair Neil Hannahs, a Kamehameha Schools exec, graciously stood by as a back-up.

    Last night Keola recorded the place-names (Mauna Kea, Hualalai, Keaukaha and Hamakua) and sent the audio to the East Coast. This morning, he arrived at  his Hilo office by 7--or 1 pm on the East Coast--to coach the national narrator and listen to the narrator commit the words to tape. Good job by the voice man, a respected on-air talent who was open to learning and who learned quickly. Keola says the man ended up pronouncing the words better than some Hawaii natives.

  As I understand it, the revised show is to be fed to TV stations across the country, as previously scheduled, at the end of this month.

And that's the story.

Mahalo nui  to Keola and to Neil, PBS Hawaii's dedicated staff, and all of the people who called or wrote to express a love of the language and the land and who took a stand. This is not about perfect pronunciation, because most of us fall short. It's about effort and respect.

And many thanks as well to the national producers, the narrator, the exec from the presenting TV station, and the program distribution organization, who chose to do the right thing for their viewers.

Comments

[Richard Ha]

I did not mean to put pressure on them. But, I wrote and said that President Obama grew up here and I was sure that he would cringe.
Richard

[grateful_shelley]

:) yay! does that mean that this corrected version will now be used nationally? feels good to hear of this happy (and pono) ending! i really think this story will inspire people to step out.. thank you again, leslie, pbs hawaii, and keola donaghy for taking this on.. i hope we start hearing people locally be held to some standards too. no more "hanalulu"! "kanio-i" and "kapialani"... thank you for steering our ship in the right direction!

[Keola Donaghy]

Aloha Leslie and mahalo to you for your leadership and strong advocacy for this issue. You're right, perhaps this is a tipping point in the media for Hawaiian and other languages.

While I appreciate the kudos, I shudder at the use of "Hawaiian language expert" and my name in the same line. Despite my title I'm a student as well, still learning like all of us.

The production team was great to work with, their narrator very professional, and didn't get flustered at being asked to do things over with minute changes that he perhaps couldn't even hear well himself. He was definitely a pro.

Hopefully some of our own TV and radio personalities will take note of this and realize that they also have a kuleana to do a bit of homework and do right by ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i.

[Lynne Waters]

A salute to Leslie and Keola for standing up on this issue and not backing down. As the spouse of a Hawaiian language speaker and a former broadcaster myself, I still cringe when I hear on-air talent mispronounce "COP-ee-uh-LA-ni" (Kapi'olani), COW-luh-COW-uh (Kalakaua) and other egregious butcherings of Hawaiian words. Keola is oh so right in his subdued plea that we must police our own house before we can police the world. Come on, local newscasters, radio DJs and public officials....it's just not that hard to do to say it correctly. And what a message it would send.